Cubs’ top 2013 rival: Wrigley rooftop owners

BenKesling

Nighttime view of Wrigley Field marquee.

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Plans for a major renovation of 99-year-old Wrigley Field could run afoul of a group of well-connected property owners who have provided baseball fans with a view of the action — and, typically, all-you-can-consume party packages — from their rooftops.

The Ricketts family, which bought the Chicago Cubs in 2009 for $845 million, has proposed a $300 million stadium renovation that, in contrast to prior iterations, the family says wouldn’t cost taxpayers a penny. The plan calls for upgrading the stadium’s locker rooms, seating and concession stands. But it also proposes erecting new decks in the outfield where fans can mingle and putting up new billboards designed to get maximum television exposure.

Chicago National League Ball Club

The Captain Morgan Club, which juts out from the ballpark’s southeast corner, is one revenue-augmentation initiative of recent years.

The proposal is chafing the owners of the buildings across from the ballpark’s outfield, on Waveland and Sheffield avenues, many of whom demolished traditional Chicago two- and three-flat apartment buildings to replace them with purpose-built game-day “clubs.” It has evolved into a substantial business, with rooftop bleachers commodious enough to hold about 200 fans per building. The owners are promising to do everything in their power to ward off obstructed views.

“There’s always been this negotiation that’s gone on between the Cubs and the neighborhood because they recognize they need each other,” said Philip Bess, a professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame specializing in baseball stadiums and urban design. “The rooftops are as much a part of Wrigley as the outfield.”

From the time Wrigley opened in 1914, before its name was changed from Weeghman Park, till as recently as the 1980s, the rooftops hosted small, impromptu gatherings hosted by residents and landlords. But as the team began drawing bigger crowds to watch fan favorites like Ryne Sandberg and Andre Dawson and then Sammy Sosa, the rooftops underwent major character changes. Building owners constructed bleachers and began charging admission, which started the ball rolling toward today’s view-maximizing multistory “clubs” and luxury boxes.

These days, fans on the rooftops eat Angus-beef burgers and cheesecake from buffets and sip espresso along with more traditional ballpark beverages, paying somewhere around $110 to watch a game, several times the price of a bleacher seat in the ballpark.

The Cubs’ plans don’t indicate exactly where the new billboards would be, but the nearby buildings’ owners are ready for yet another fight in their long and complicated relationship with the team. In 2002, the Cubs, then owned by Tribune Co. — which retained a small stake after selling the team to the TD Ameritrade
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founder Ricketts family of Omaha, Neb., and Chicago — sued building owners who were charging fans to watch games from outside the stadium, claiming, among other things, copyright infringement. The rooftop owners fought back, and in 2004 they reached a 20-year deal with the club. The Cubs agreed not to block the rooftop views in exchange for 17% of the rooftop owners’ gross revenue. That worked out to about $4 million last year.

In both 2004 and today, the now 16-building-strong group called the Wrigleyville Rooftop Association has counted on a powerful ally in Democratic Alderman Tom Tunney, to whom they have given more than $140,000 in campaign contributions in the past decade. Tunney, a restaurateur in the Lake View neighborhood that surrounds Wrigley, declined to comment, but in a news release he pledged to protect the “quality of life for all our neighbors and local businesses in the ward.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, also a Democrat, is in the mix, too, trying to broker a compromise, as long as the city doesn’t have to pay.

The rooftop owners’ main complaint for now is that the Cubs’ new billboards could violate their mutual agreement that includes a city landmark ordinance guaranteeing an “uninterrupted sweep of the bleachers” and the field’s “unenclosed, open-air character,” vaguely worded clauses open to interpretation.

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